


It's Not Supposed to Happen

by Lolo_row



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Cuddly Mickey Milkovich, Domestic Fluff, Domestic Ian Gallagher/Mickey Milkovich, Ian Gallagher and Mickey Milkovich in Love, M/M, Married Ian Gallagher/Mickey Milkovich, Post-Canon, Post-Season/Series 10, Sweet Mickey Milkovich
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-15
Updated: 2020-11-15
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:14:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27581213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lolo_row/pseuds/Lolo_row
Summary: Ian and Mickey are happily married, and the Gallagher clan has welcomed Mickey as one of their own. But when Fiona arrives for a visit, she still treats Mickey like he's an outsider, and Ian won't rest until he figures out what's making his sister treat his husband like shit.Mostly fluff, plus feelings.
Relationships: Ian Gallagher & Mickey Milkovich, Ian Gallagher/Mickey Milkovich
Comments: 23
Kudos: 463





	It's Not Supposed to Happen

Ian had been hopeful that his new P.O. would end up being Larry Seaver, same as Mickey’s, but apparently the death of Paula had been the end of his good luck streak. Well, maybe not the end—as the ring on his left hand reminded him. But the P.O. he’d gotten wasn’t exactly the barrel of monkeys that Mickey’s was. Larry had gotten the guys a wedding present, for fuck’s sake. He’d actually seemed hurt when he learned the wedding had taken place and he wasn’t invited, the way Mickey told it. A parole officer, expecting to be invited to a parolee’s wedding! That shit was wild. And now he’d gotten Mickey on full-time security at the mall, since his probationary ninety days had gone so well, and he was actually on the payroll with salary and benefits. When he’d consulted Lip on how much he should put into his 401K every pay check, Lip had actually fallen on his ass laughing.

Meanwhile, Ian had ended up with a total clown, Tom Baker, who was about five minutes from his retirement and couldn’t care less what happened to his parolees. He had ignored all that Ian had told him about wanting to help people and put his paramedic training to good use, and decided that Ian was a good candidate to work at a Burger King. A fucking Burger King, where he could barely scrounge up thirty hours per week.

Not that it mattered. Money wasn’t much of a problem anymore, now that Mickey was working full-time. And his insurance was actually pretty good. Ian was back on the fancy prison meds, and he felt better than he had in months—years, probably. Except, of course, that he always smelled like French fries, and his legs ached from standing at a grill all day, and every moment he spent doing something he sincerely couldn’t give a shit about made a little piece of him die inside. He used to have a purpose, a calling. Now, all he had was a fucking fifteen percent employee discount, and since Mickey’s discount for the mall food court was almost twice as much, it didn’t even make sense to use it.

Speaking of which, Ian looked up from where he was sitting at the kitchen table, still feeling like he smelled like grease even though he’d showered for a full thirty minutes, and smiled when Mickey pushed his way through the door.

A wide smile spread across his husband’s face when he saw Ian. He nodded to him, kicked off his shoes, then sauntered over, holding two bags of takeout from Panda Express. “The fuck is everybody?” he said. “I brought dinner.”

“Probably still on the way back from the airport,” Ian said. “Carl told me Fiona’s flight was delayed.”

“Oh, that’s right. Fiona.” Mickey hesitated, bags in hand, and said, “This shit won’t be any good if we wait any longer to eat it. Might as well dig in, just the two of us.”

Ian smiled. “I never complain about doing anything just the two of us. Though, if we’re all alone in the house for once, I can think of some better ways to spend our time.”

Mickey smiled. He put the bags in the middle of the table, then walked over and stood in front of Ian, reaching one hand down to tilt Ian’s chin up towards himself. “Yeah?”

Ian reached for Mickey’s hips, pulling him close. “Yeah.”

They kissed, and before long, Mickey was climbing on Ian’s lap, and they both had raging hard-ons that were clashing with each other in the heated space between them, when suddenly the door in the living room swung open, and voices started echoing through the house.

“Fuck,” Mickey groaned, releasing Ian’s mouth and dropping his forehead to Ian’s shoulder.

“Hold that thought,” Ian whispered back, giving Mickey’s ass a good squeeze before pushing him gently off his lap and rising to his feet. Years of practice meant he could get his boner to settle down pretty quickly. Mickey, meanwhile, took his time, retreating to a corner of the kitchen. Ian kept his laughter to himself, too.

“Fi,” he called, looking for the mop of brown, frizzy hair amid the crowd of excitement gathered near the front door. She looked good—tired from her flight, but good. She was thinner than she’d been last time Ian had seen her, but she looked happy. She had one arm around Liam and the other around Carl, and behind her, Debbie was talking her ear off about something or other.

When Fiona saw Ian, though, she said, “Hold that thought, Deb.” Then she met Ian halfway through the room. “Sweet face, look at you. A married man!” And squeezed him for all she was worth. When they let go, she added, “Is Mickey here?”

“In the kitchen,” Ian said. Then, to the others, he added, “Hope you guys aren’t tired of Panda Express.”

“Mickey brought dinner again?” Carl cried excitedly, pushing his way to the kitchen. “Fuck, yeah!”

Lip, following behind the others, said, “Oh, sweet, I’ll text Tami.”

“I’m tiwed of Panda Exwess!” Franny cried, but Debbie was already halfway to the table, so only Liam answered her.

“Tough. That’s what’s for dinner,” he said.

Fiona looked at him, eyebrows raised, and then glanced back at Ian. “Little ruler of the roost, huh? You are so grown up, Liam, I can’t believe it.”

Liam looked proud of himself as he guided his niece to the table.

Then Fiona and Ian were in the kitchen, too, and Mickey acknowledged Fiona with a bob of the chin. “Hey,” he said. Then, after a pause, “Welcome home.”

“Thanks,” she said, and she smiled at him with the same enthusiasm she’d shown for Ian—though not quite the same warmth—and pulled him into a hug. He came reluctantly, grunting his thanks when she added, “Welcome to the family!”

“Been in the family a while, but okay,” he muttered as he pulled back.

She seemed to notice her mistake, but she still smiled as she shook her head and said, “Yeah, no. Of course you have. I just meant, welcome officially.” Then she turned to the others. “Wow, Panda Express. This looks great! It’s been forever since I’ve had anything but a burger and fries for dinner.” She looked at Ian and said, “I was telling the others, I’m a manager now for a bar and grill. They give me paid time off every year, so I figured it was about time I come home and visit. I’m sorry,” she added, with a meaningful look at Ian, “that I didn’t make it for the wedding, though.”

“No worries,” Ian said. “You’re here now. And I know about that burger and fries life, too.”

“Oh, yeah? You working in food service?”

“Yeah,” he said, blushing a little as he admitted, “my P.O. set me up at Burger King. It’s shitty, but I guess it was hard to place a violent felon with bipolar disorder.”

There wasn’t much anybody could say to that, but after a pause, Fiona said, “No shame in working somewhere boring until you get your feet under you, though. I’m sure you’ll find something better soon.” It was spoken with that old Fiona confidence, the belief that good things would happen to other people, though they’d never actually happened for her.

“How long are you staying?” Debbie asked her around bites of fried rice. “Your email didn’t say.”

“A week,” Fiona answered brightly. “So, I’m hoping to see some old friends, spend some time with Kev and V. You know, the usual.” She paused. “Where’s Frank these days, anyway?”

A chorus of “who knows” and “beats me” sprang up around the table, before Liam said confidently, “He’s training to become a monk.”

“A what, now?”

“A fucking monk?”

“You can’t be serious.”

“Jesus fucking Christ.”

Liam shrugged. “He says there’s free food, free room and board, and everybody leaves him alone. Only problem is there’s no booze—but the communion wine is in this big cellar under the church, and nobody ever goes there.”

Fiona rolled her eyes. “Oh, geez. He’s stealing communion wine?”

“No,” Liam said, “he’s hiding his whiskey there.”

“Ah, makes much more sense.”

As though he knew anything about it, Liam added very seriously, “You can’t even get a buzz off of a bottle of communion wine.”

“I guess not,” Fiona replied. They all had little boxes of takeout—Micky always brought back a smorgasbord, with enough rice and wantons and egg rolls to last another family a couple days—though the Gallaghers weren’t the kind of family that ever had leftovers. Too many years of “eat first or don’t eat at all.”

“What about you, Mickey? You get a gig working at Panda Express?”

“No,” Mickey replied. Ian noticed that he was still standing in the kitchen, though everybody else was seated at the table. He glanced around and noticed that the usual number of chairs was out, but now they had an extra, and Fiona was in his seat. But of course, Mickey hadn’t said anything; he’d just scooted up to the counter and cracked open a box of teriyaki chicken from there.

While Ian got up to find a chair for his husband to join them at the dinner table, Mickey said, “I work mall security now.”

Just then, Lip and Tami showed up through the back door, hauling a sleeping Freddy in his car seat, and Lip said, “Full time with benefits, Fiona. He’s got the most legit gig out of any of us.”

“No shit?” Fiona looked like she was torn between impressed and disbelief.

Mickey said, “Well, I’m not running jobs for my dad anymore, am I? Fucking asshole tried to murder my husband. Fuck that shit.”

The chair Ian had just brought was quickly occupied by Tami, who reminded Mickey in her most patient voice, “Remember, even though he can’t talk yet, that’s not the kind of language I want Freddy to hear. The pediatrician says he pays attention to everything.”

Mickey rolled his eyes but apologized dutifully. The next chair Ian brought was filled by Lip, and only then did Mickey realize what he was doing. “Hey,” he said to his husband softly. “It’s fine. I’m fine standing here.”

“No, you gotta sit to eat,” Ian said.

“Since fucking when?”

“Since you’re not a fucking animal,” Ian replied, earning a middle finger from his husband. “I’ll finish eating, and then we can trade places, okay?”

“If you say so,” Mickey said, but his smile at Ian showed him that he appreciated it.

Fiona held the baby and chatted with Tami for a little while, and it almost seemed like old times again. The funny thing was, Ian wasn’t so sure he liked old times. Old times were Mickey on the outside, being judged all the time by Lip and Fiona, and never really given the respect he’d earned by being Ian’s partner—truly his partner, in every sense of the word. Nobody else’s significant other had been kept quite on the outs, Ian realized, the way his had. And maybe that was his own fault; maybe, way back when, he hadn’t made space for him. He hadn’t taken Mickey’s struggles seriously, and that gave the rest of the family permission to treat him like an afterthought, too.

Ian gestured to Mickey to come closer. Like he’d been tethered to Ian and just waiting for him to pull the string, Mickey came easily.

“Let’s just share my chair,” Ian said.

“What kind of fucking chick thing is that to ask me to do?”

Ian laughed, patting his leg. “Come on. Just this once? I don’t like us all being here with you way over there.”

Mickey rolled his eyes and made to walk away, but then he hesitated. “Fine, asshole,” he said. Ian’s legs were long enough, and Mickey sat carefully on his right leg, facing to the middle so they could look at each other.

Ian touched Mickey’s chin and smiled. “Good boy. See, that wasn’t hard.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Mickey said, but he smiled as he reached for some more food.

They ate until they were stuffed, and then they sat around the table and talked. Mickey didn’t get up, and Ian liked it that way. Loved it, in fact. For more than a year, he and Mickey had been back together and practically inseparable—but not a single part of their relationship had lost its thrill for him. Not even close to it. He let a hand rub lazily up Mickey’s back as he listened to Fiona tell a story about one of her co-workers, and Mickey exhaled softly, relaxing under Ian’s hands. Ian loved this part, the lazy, warm, mundane part. He never thought he and Mickey would have this—never, in a million years.

They moved to the living room to watch TV together—an old Gallagher family pastime—and while Fiona lingered in the kitchen to clean up, Mickey whispered to Ian, “She still hates me, man.”

“What?” It was Ian’s first inkling at that anything was wrong, but Mickey was looking at him with a serious expression, and he gestured towards the kitchen.

“Your sister. She still doesn’t like me.”

“That’s not true,” Ian protested.

“No? Did you hear what she said about Mexico?” It had been a joke Fiona had made at the dinner table—that it was lucky for Mickey, after turning himself in to be with Ian, that Ian had still even wanted him, or else he might have given up the sun and beaches and freedom for nothing.

“She was joking, Mick.”

“It wouldn’ta mattered to me, anyway, if you didn’t want to be with me anymore. I mean,” he corrected himself, “yeah, it woulda mattered, but you still needed my protection. I wasn’t gonna let you go to Beckman without me.”

Ian nuzzled Mickey’s neck. “Forget she said anything. It was just a stupid joke.”

“Very stupid,” Mickey agreed. He huffed a sigh, then tipped his head up and kissed Ian’s chin. “I might just go upstairs. Let you guys have some family time. That okay?”

“No,” Ian said, looking at Mickey seriously and taking one hand in his. “You’re family. If you duck out, I duck out with you.”

Mickey glanced back at the family, a little half-smile, half-frown on his face that Ian knew meant he’d said the right thing. “I’m not gonna do that, and you know it. I just—I don’t know. I feel out of place all of a sudden.”

“I know what you mean,” Ian said. The truth was, Fiona was never a fan of Ian being with Mickey. But they’d both changed since they were kids, and Fiona didn’t know what she was talking about anymore, judging them. “Look, she doesn’t get it. Okay? Nobody does.” He tipped Mickey’s face up to look into his eyes. “What we got? It’s nothing they ever understood. They don’t see you how I see you, Mick.”

“I know,” Mickey whispered back. He glanced away again, the intimacy of the moment probably a little more than he could handle. Ian gave him his space for a second, heard his hoarse whisper of, “Jesus Christ,” and knew that he was getting through to him.

“I love you,” Ian said, and then he waited, quiet, until Mickey met his eyes again. Then he leaned in and kissed him, right there in the stairwell. “Husband.”

Mickey smiled against his lips when he said it, then groaned as he pulled away. “Okay. One hour of TV. Then we go upstairs.”

“Deal.” Ian smiled, placing his hands on Mickey’s shoulders and following him down the stairs back to the couch, where they sat on the floor, arms and legs tangled up with each other’s, and zoned out.

There were popcorn bags, beer bottles, cigarette butts, and empty candy wrappers everywhere you looked. Fiona was right back to her old ways, cleaning everything up after the rest of the family went to bed. Ian and Mickey had stayed much longer than an hour; it was after midnight by the time Mickey finally declared that he had to get to bed if he was going to be able to wake up at the butt crack of dawn for his job in the morning.

“Long train ride,” he explained to Fiona as he stood up.

She’d made a joke, again—seemingly harmless on the surface, but Ian had seen Mickey bristle at it. “What’s the big hurry, you’ll probably get fired any day now, anyway,” she’d quipped.

“Not a fucking chance,” Mickey said. “I need this job so you lazy assholes can afford to keep groceries in the fridge.”

That wasn’t quite true. This was, in fact, the most comfortably they’d lived in a long time, and Mickey’s money was hardly needed. So they were saving up. Nobody knew it yet, but Ian and Mickey wanted to get a place of their own—somewhere nearby, of course, but not so close that the millions of Gallaghers always running around would assume that it was just a satellite of the main house. They wanted privacy. Independence. A chance to decorate and shit the way they liked—well, the way Ian liked. Mickey had made it abundantly clear that he didn’t care. Still, it was important, and staying out of prison was important, and Mickey knew it. He wasn’t the person anymore who flaked on Ian and did jobs that weren’t exactly kosher. He stayed on the right side of the law now, for the most part, anyway. He was responsible—and Ian didn’t really appreciate anybody suggesting otherwise. And now that Mickey was upstairs, he was going to say something about it.

“Thanks,” Fiona said tiredly, smiling at Ian as he handed her a popcorn bag full of discarded trash he’d picked up off the floor. “I’m used to being the only one cleaning up. What do you guys do without me, anyway?”

“We don’t have movie nights,” he replied honestly.

“Sad,” she said, turning to bring the trash bags into the kitchen.

Ian followed her. “Hey, listen,” he started, a little awkwardly. “You don’t have a problem with Mickey, do you?”

She laughed a little. “No more than usual.”

He smiled, but it was pained. “Yeah, about that…”

She turned to look at him, folding her arms in front of her. “Look, it’s fine. He’s your husband now, I get that. I might not have made the same choice, but—”

“Fiona, you don’t even know him.”

“I know him.”

“You used to know him. Like, five years ago, before he went away. He’s not that person anymore.”

“No? He’s not the asshole who married a Russian hooker and then abandoned his kid, and went to prison for attempted murder, and tried to get you to run to the border with him?”

“No,” Ian said, “he’s the asshole who came back from Mexico so he could protect me. And he’s still protecting me. He turned his life around,” he added, and he heard the echoes of Fiona’s words to him, years ago, trying to convince him to stay away from Mickey. But she’d been wrong about him. “But you can’t see it.”

Fiona sighed, setting down a couple of the empty bottles. They hit the counter with a dull thud, and Ian reached out to keep one from rolling off the counter and shattering onto the floor. “Okay, Ian. Fine. You win. He turned his life around, and now he’s perfect for you. Jesus, what do you want me to say?”

He hadn’t expected her to get angry, and his brain couldn’t really form a more coherent response than, “Uh…”

“You know, it’s not supposed to happen like that. It doesn’t happen like that for anybody else,” she added.

“What are you talking about?”

“You fall for the piece of shit guy, and he’s an asshole, and he lies to you, and he hurts you, and you think, ‘Maybe if I just love him enough, he’ll change. Maybe he’ll be different, and maybe I’ll be different when I’m with him.’ But that never happens. The guy never changes, because an asshole is an asshole, and that’s just the way it’s always been. You,” she added, pointing another empty bottle at him, “are the only one who found a guy who actually did change. The piece of shit from the wrong side of the tracks turned out to love you enough that he actually became who you always knew he could be.” She wiped her eyes and added angrily, “That isn’t fucking supposed to happen. He’s supposed to stay a piece of shit forever. That’s what men do.”

Ian hesitated. He wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, but it really, really wasn’t this. “You’re not mad at Mickey,” he said quietly.

“No,” she said, shaking her head and wiping her nose as she looked down at the counter.

“Look,” he said, though he felt like he was grasping for straws, “a lot of guys are pieces of shit. But I don’t think Mickey ever was. I think we all maybe got that wrong about him. I don’t know who coulda grown up the way he did and turned out not to be a murderous psychopath, but he isn’t. He talks a big talk, but…but the person he is now, that was always Mickey.”

Fiona finally looked up at Ian and had enough command of herself to smile. “Well, I guess you were the only one who knew it, then.”

Ian smiled at that; he liked feeling that connection with Mickey, a decade long and still just as profound as it had been at first. That nobody knew Mickey quite like Ian did.

“I’m happy for you,” Fiona said sincerely, opening her arms to invite Ian in for a hug. He leaned in, smiling at the way he thought he could smell a little bit of lingering burger grease on her, too. Some things just never changed.

After they parted, Fiona said, “I’ll be nicer to Mickey, okay? I’m not trying to upset you guys. I just always used to rag on him, so it felt natural.”

“I mean, you don’t have to walk on eggshells around him,” Ian replied. “Just keep in mind that he’s my husband. So he’s your brother now, kind of, technically.”

“Yeah, he is,” she said, and that made her smile even more broadly. “He’s my brother now.” She hugged Ian again. “I’m really proud of you, Ian. Both of you.”

When Ian finally went upstairs, Mickey was undressed and in bed—but he wasn’t asleep. Ian scooted in beside him.

“I talked to Fiona,” he whispered as he threw an arm over Mickey’s waist.

“Oh, Jesus,” Mickey grunted. “You didn’t talk about me, did you?”

“Well…”

Mickey rolled over, temporarily displacing Ian’s arm. “It’s fine. I can handle her ribbing me for a week. It’s only a week. I feel like a pansy for even bringing it up.”

Ian said, “I would have talked to her about it anyway. Look, she doesn’t have a problem with you.”

“No?”

“No,” Ian said, and he couldn’t quite say the next part without laughing. “I think she might be…jealous.”

Mickey laughed out loud at that, too. “Oh, Jesus Christ. Jealous of us?”

Ian laughed. “Yeah! Like, she saw you in your mall cop uniform and me with my Burger King stench, and she thought, sign me up for a life like that!”

Mickey chuckled but rolled closer to Ian. “The smell is starting to grow on me, though. Makes me hungry.”

Ian tickled Mickey’s ribs, and he yelped and rolled on top of Ian in retaliation, looking down at him with that look in his eyes—that indescribable look that Ian hadn’t gotten anywhere near used to yet. "By the way, Larry feels sorry for you. He says he thinks he can get you a job at a clinic as like, a receptionist or some shit. He's gonna call your P.O. about it next week. I asked if receptionists had to be chicks, and he said no."

Ian cracked up. "Mickey. You asked him to do that for me?"

Mickey shrugged. "He asks about you all the time, so. Might as well take advantage of that do-gooder spirit."

Ian smiled. Maybe his days smelling like a hamburger were numbered, after all. "You're too good to me."

"Tell your sister that," Mickey quipped. Ian sighed, and Mickey said, "I'm just kidding, dude. I don't really care that much."

But on the off-chance that he did, Ian said, “Fiona said guys like you aren’t supposed to change."

“Change? Didn’t fucking change,” Mickey said.

“Pretty different now than when she first met you, though, Mick,” Ian pointed out, and he shifted his weight a little to feel whether Mickey might be ready to continue what they’d started before dinner. It felt like he was. Ian let his hands slide down a little further on Mickey's waist.

But Mickey was still for another moment, looking down into Ian’s eyes. “That wasn’t me, back then,” he said. “You know that. Who was ever gonna let me be myself? I wasn’t, until you showed me who I could be.”

Ian reached up to touch Mickey’s face, a palm cupping his cheek, and the other rubbing his fingers over Mickey’s lips. They parted, sucking one finger into Mickey’s mouth. Ian sighed, then said, “I’m the luckiest son of a bitch in the world.”

Mickey laughed, rolled his eyes, and said sarcastically, “Okay.” And Ian knew exactly who Mickey thought was the luckiest. But the truth was, they both were. And Ian was never going to let himself, or his family, forget that ever again.

**Author's Note:**

> This work was inspired by a video by LizLawliet that I'm low-key obsessed with called "gallavich ♥ | ian & mickey [+10x12] - they don't know about us." After I watched it for the 100th time, I thought, it would be really satisfying to see the whole Gallagher family, Fiona included, finally accepting Mickey. It was the one little thing I felt was missing.


End file.
